May 11, 2006

Samuel Abt profiles Floyd Landis

New York Times cycling correspondent Samuel Abt sat down with Floyd Landis in Belgium this week to discuss his remarkable spring, and whether he can extend the success into July.

“I don't know for sure that I can or will win the Tour, but I think that I can,” he said in an interview as he visited his Phonak teammates during the early days of the Giro d'Italia, which started in Belgium.

After a long pause to consider his words, the 30-year-old Californian continued, “I've told myself, I've convinced myself for a long time that I can do it, since I started road racing” in 1999 after a successful career as a mountain biker.

Landis thinks he may be getting some payback for the chaos of last winter, when Phonak lost Tyler Hamilton and Santiago Perez to a doping suspension, and didn't know whether the team would make the ProTour or not.